The Rule of Threes by Marcy Campbell (android e book reader txt) 📕

“Your mom forgave me, you know,” Dad said, now looking straight at me.

What was he expecting me to say? I wasn’t going to tell him I forgave him. I wasn’t that easy.

“Well,” he said, “maybe we should just call it a night.” He sighed. “Want this open or closed?” He pointed to my closet door while I sank deeper into my nest of stuffed animals. I didn’t answer.

“Try and be compassionate,” he said, “to Tony. He’s been through a lot. You have no idea.”

He started walking out but turned back around. “I love you, Mags,” he said.

I still didn’t answer.

Eventually, the sun started to dip behind our neighbor’s chimney. My stomach was growling like crazy, but how could my stomach think about food at a time like this? Stomachs were so stupid. Everything was stupid. Still, I could smell the garlic bread, and it was making me drool. Maybe I could just tiptoe down and grab a plate, bring it back to my room.

I went downstairs, walked down the hall, peeked into the dining room. Mom and Dad were sitting in their usual spots at either end of our rectangular wooden table. And there he was. Thankfully, Tony wasn’t in my chair, but the one opposite, the one in front of the large window. Outside was the pear tree with the bird feeder I’d given Dad last Christmas. Tony’s back was to the window. I wondered if my parents were playing the “One Big Thing” game with him, though it was pretty obvious what big thing happened to all of us today.

My seat, on the other side of the table, always had a clear view of the outdoors so that, during dinner, I could see if any birds came by to eat their own meals. I’d learned to identify the usual suspects, the cardinals and titmice and chickadees, house sparrows, robins, the occasional nuthatch. But now, if I went in and sat down, Tony’s big head would be blocking my view.

Meanwhile, Tony’s view was of a large mirror on the wall that my mom and I had hung over the summer after we’d painted the room a pale yellow. The mirror brought the outdoors in, made the small room look bigger, but that was an illusion, of course, a decorating trick. So, not only would Tony be blocking my view of the birds, but he got his own view of them, reflected in the mirror. It wasn’t fair, none of it. Oh, how I wished Tony himself was an illusion, just a trick of the light.

Tony saw me and stopped eating, his fork hanging in midair. Mom turned around and said, “Maggie, honey, why don’t you come in and eat with us?”

“I’m not very hungry,” I lied. “I’ll get something later,” I blurted and ran back up to my room.

I went to my desk and grabbed my shell, hidden behind a trio of accessories. The shell was small, barely two inches long and spiral-shaped. I ran my index finger down its side, feeling the bumpy ridges. I’d done this so much that the ridges were starting to smooth out and flatten.

No one knew about my shell, not even my dad, even though he was the one who’d found it on our trip to Florida when I was eight.

We had so much fun on that trip, my parents laughing with each other, and with me, in the waves, and I felt like everything was perfect, whereas just months before that, it had all seemed like it was falling apart. Dad had spotted the shell on the beach and pointed it out to me. He’d brushed off the sand and held it up in the sunlight, where it glowed a ghostly white. I told him it looked like a unicorn horn, and he said, yes, it had once belonged to the tiniest unicorn in the world.

Then he told me about narwhals, which were real, not like unicorns. A narwhal is like a unicorn of the sea. I liked that. I thought it was cool to think about this totally weird animal out there in the ocean, living its life, doing its narwhal-like things with hardly anyone ever seeing it. It seemed impossible.

My mom wasn’t a fan of my bringing home a bunch of shells, which she said would just get broken in the suitcase and leak sand everywhere, so I only kept this one, carrying it home in the pocket of my shorts, then tucking it behind the items on my desk, where it had been ever since.

I didn’t think the shell had any magical powers, at least not like the kind that came from a genie’s lamp, but I couldn’t deny that when I skipped over its ridges with my thumb, I felt like everything was going to be all right, and that was its own kind of magic. I rubbed it one last time before putting it back. At some point, I fell asleep and dreamed of flying pigs.

Breakfast of Champions

I woke up in the middle of the night, 2:35 a.m., to be exact. I’d slept in my clothes. One of my legs was bent at an odd angle, and when I stretched, it felt like I was being poked by a million little pins.

I let my eyes adjust to the dark, then stepped into the hallway, where the little plastic nightlight cast its orange glow on the wall. I peeked into my parents’ room. They were both asleep, and close to each other, Dad’s arm thrown over Mom’s shoulders. I paused a minute to look at them. It was nice seeing them so cuddly, even if they weren’t actually aware of what they were doing.

In the spare bedroom, Tony was asleep on his stomach, wearing a blue plaid pajama top that looked like Dad’s old one. Wrapped around the back of his neck was Mittens.

“Psst,” I whispered. “Psst, Mittens, you traitor.”

Had Mittens just climbed up there on her own?